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OH SURE, UNINSURED

Health Care Crisis activists like to point to the "41 million" uninsured people out there as a proof to their case. Turns out that half that number of people are only temporarily uninsured, and get insurance inside a year. That's what the CBO shows in the accompanying chart (click to enlarge).

Comments

If there are 41 million uninsured at any given time, and twenty millionof them get insurance within a year, then a.) we have 21 million long-term uninsured, and b.) we have tens of millions living in justified fear that they are about to join the rolling twenty million.

Is that supposed to be somehow better than having a stable and identifiable forty-one million uninsured?

Not at all. My point is that before we can implement meaningful reform, people have to do two things. #1: Understand that the crisis we face is a cost and delivery crisis, NOT a quality crisis. This is important in order that we not vitiate quality in the headlong pusuit of reform. #2: Stop trying to "pad" the case for reform by maliciously proffering statistics that are misleading and/or wrong and/or misapplied.

Insofar as the uninsured statistics, "the relevant statistic, the percentage of uninsured of the total population, was 14.1% in 1992, reached an all-time high of 16.3% in 1998, fell to 14.2% in 2000, and was 15.2% in 2002 (Census Bureau/Current Population Reports).

Health-insurance coverage reporting started in 1987, and it seems that what we observe is a cyclical behavior, rather than a trend." (NYT 5/14/04).

If you look carefully at the statistics you might infer that many people are uninsured because they choose to be. Don't forget, everyone can always be treated in an emergency room, by law. They cannot be turned away and they retain the right to sue ER providors who neglect them, mistreat or misdiagnose them.

The uninsured are a huge problem, I agree wholeheartedly. But we need to be honest, address the problem squarely, and dissect this problem out from the health care debate in order to work on it without affecting health care quality.

Not at all. My point is that before we can implement meaningful reform, people have to do two things. #1: Understand that the crisis we face is a cost and delivery crisis, NOT a quality crisis. This is important in order that we not vitiate quality in the headlong pusuit of reform. #2: Stop trying to "pad" the case for reform by maliciously proffering statistics that are misleading and/or wrong and/or misapplied.

Insofar as the uninsured statistics, "the relevant statistic, the percentage of uninsured of the total population, was 14.1% in 1992, reached an all-time high of 16.3% in 1998, fell to 14.2% in 2000, and was 15.2% in 2002 (Census Bureau/Current Population Reports).

Health-insurance coverage reporting started in 1987, and it seems that what we observe is a cyclical behavior, rather than a trend." (NYT 5/14/04).

If you look carefully at the statistics you might infer that many people are uninsured because they choose to be. Don't forget, everyone can always be treated in an emergency room, by law. They cannot be turned away and they retain the right to sue ER providors who neglect them, mistreat or misdiagnose them.

The uninsured are a huge problem, I agree wholeheartedly. But we need to be honest, address the problem squarely, and dissect this problem out from the health care debate in order to work on it without affecting health care quality.

I agree cost and dilivery. I am a disabled person who fell under a goverment program called the Longshore Second Injury fund. Reasons why is that I had a birth deffect called Extrofee. (I hope my spelling is right)my blatter was on the outside at birth. My parents were told, By doctors they did not think I would live to be 21 days old. At the age of 21 days they did a blatter tuck. From that time until I was eight years old I went through surgery after surgery because I could not hold my urine. I now wear a blatter pouch. A age sixteen I had my first of many kidneystone.My hips had to be broken as a child to straiten my legs, therefore when I fell in the manhole on the shipyard where I worked it was called a second injury. After I was found to be disabled, I also found out that the fund would only cover the injury. Therefore my kedney problems and any other health problem that comes along with growing old on that disablity fund would never be covered and impossable for me to get coverage through any program under Social Security, such as Medicaid and Medicare. Since the time of my disablity I had a stone taken out of my left kidney and the following year the kidney was removed. I had these surgeries at MUSC in Charleston SC where I have been going since the age of nineteen. I will turn fifty this year.

I say dam you for saying that this is not a quality health care crisis, that is being forced on the care providers and passed on to the unsured.

You tell me if you're sick go to the emergency room. I just had to do that, where I stayed from eleven oclock in the morning till six oclock that afternoon to be tranfered to the musc by ambulance one block away, to have the doctor stick his finger up my ass to tell me I had a prostate infection and you call that quality care, at a cost of over seven-thousand dollars, because yuo can't call a clince and get an appointment because you don't have money coming out your YANG-YANG.